


Shriek

by inb4invert



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alpha Severus Snape, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Remus Lupin, Rimming, Sad, Shrieking Shack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 15:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12774156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inb4invert/pseuds/inb4invert
Summary: There: hunched over in the gloom of a far corner, a huddled shape curled in upon itself amidst the antique bric-a-brac, trembling tightly. Another wavering cry pours its liquid heat down the base of his spine, and then--head snapped up, frightened doe-eyes lock with his own horror-stricken stare. No. This isn't right.





	Shriek

It seemed as if May was never going to end. Not quite summer--winter's bracing chill already long forgotten--the sluggish air pressed incessantly, heavy and damp against his too-tight skin. Stroked and grasped at him like hot, sweaty palms, coaxing restless and demanding. Pacing. Ripening. For weeks now, Snape's rut had been coming on, looming like a threat, and with nineteen days still left to the month, he was nearly ready to break. 

One teenage body shouldn't be able to hold this much frustration. There were too many variables, too many things to snap and snarl at, too many thwarted appetites. Scents and sounds alike chafed at him ceaselessly--quickening and drawing sudden urges as easily as blood scratched to the surface of the skin. Leading him, as he'd found himself in the prefect's lavatory this very afternoon: caught in meditation over the tantalizing smell of Lily Evan's hair, fucking angrily into his own fist as he glared down at knuckles bruised raw from the wall he'd punched only yesterday--the whole time feeling seconds away from tearing apart at the seams with opposing lusts. Fuck. Kill. Claim. Bite. He wanted to die. 

Potions weren't of any help, either. Not yet. As hard as he'd tried--hours spent lurking between the library's shelves to pour over near-forgotten tomes--nothing had even come close to tamping down the storm rising up within his gangling frame. At best, a simple calming draught had granted him slight rest for a fitful hour or two, his nights spent sweating it out, caught in the grip of frantic dreams. Even hard-won sleep held no refuge from his traitorous body: his subconscious mind become a haunted house of mounting shadows and urgent, wounded moans. There was nothing to be done about it, the rites of spring engraved bone-deep and infallible. Beyond magic, beyond the reach of clever minds. Out of his coveted control.

Lost to the dictates of his flesh, the quest for relief--either potion or palm--had very nearly derailed his latest favourite obsession: finding out just what the fuck James Potter and his dim-witted friends were getting up to. Month after month, slipping out into the night at the turning of the moon, flouting the rules: their own private little boy’s club. The whole thing centred around Lupin, of that much he was sure. Anyone who didn't at least suspect the boy of being a werewolf was an idiot, something Snape could proudly claim he was not. It was sad really, the way the quiet Griffindor clung to his mates, dragging himself down to their level in his eagerness for protection. A shy and docile pet, following along for fear of loneliness. But how the others factored into it, what part they could possibly play--that was something Snape had yet to understand. He'd almost abandoned it altogether--too caught up in the fugue of his raging hormones--until earlier today, when Black, that insufferable cock, had let slip a scrap of information too tempting to let go. “Just poke it with a stick, you git,” he'd scoffed outside the dining hall, tossing his overgrown fringe to better showcase the arrogant glare Snape knew was reserved only for him. “Give it a good jab and slither down the tunnel like the worm you are. See what you might find, hmmm?” It had taken everything he had not to lunge right then and there, ire stoked to blazing by the challenge of another alpha, no less one he hated even more deeply than his own father. But this was worth the effort of self-containment, too valuable to spoil. 

It won’t do anything to alleviate his oncoming rut--will barely distract him from it, most likely. But it will go some length to satisfying an even greater need: the constant campaign of revenge against his hated tormentors. It nearly makes Snape hard just at the very thought of catching them out once and for all--seeing them all expelled--removed from his life in a single, elegant coup. Another summer spent at home, dodging his father and enduring his mother’s sullen silence would be made infinitely more bearable knowing Potter and company weren’t waiting for him come next fall. But he isn't stupid. He isn't about to march himself into whatever heavy-handed scheme Sirius Black thought he was cooking up for him. Tomorrow night's full moon will be his chance to gain the evidence he’s been panting after, but no one was expecting him tonight. Tonight, he’ll prepare himself ahead of time, discover what lies beyond the whomping willow and strategize his plan. No surprises. 

Already, the willow itself had been a sore challenge, one he isn't all that eager to take on again as soon as tomorrow, but his sinewy length had served him well enough. Allowed him to weave and spin away from hurtling branches, slipping shadow-quick, the adrenaline of the dance fairly singing in his rut-fevered veins. Even so, he'd only narrowly missed a crushing blow towards the end, ducking low to stab hard at the gnarled knot hidden in the tangle of roots around the base of the tree.  
Finally inside, electric with anticipation at the mouth of the unknown, he’s breathing deep lungfuls of the tunnel air--cool, rich earth-taste on the back of his tongue. He's still holding the branch he'd used in a death grip, dry bark crumbling and cutting against his palm as the tension slowly shivers its way out of his system. He lets it go, a dull thud echoing through the long passage as he tells his feet to move, taking him towards whatever waits for him at the other end. 

He doesn't know how long he's been walking, time grown syrupy and strange in the dark of the deep ground as he runs his hands along the root-woven soil at either side. Letting it sift and fall damp and clinging through his fingers, just feeling his way along every twist and turn without the aid of his wand. It won't do to announce his presence until he's sure of where he stands. Until he knows just what it is he's even up against. It's almost soothing, he thinks, alone in the quiet winding blackness--and then the heavy mantle begins to thin, grey light mellowing the curves of the corner up ahead. Snape slows his steps, moving closer with more caution, and as he nears the turning, a scent greets him, seeming almost mingled and bound with the light itself. It's heavenly sweet on the air, however faint--crooking a beckoning finger that has his heart suddenly racing as though it could dash ahead without him the rest of the way, leaving him empty and stupid in the tunnel behind. He breathes in deep, feeling his balls tighten in sharp pleasure-pain at the taste that skims a silky promise over his tongue. He snorts out a surprised little huff, reaching a hand abortively towards the dirt wall in a shaky half-swoon. He wants to sink himself in that scent. Needs to bury himself down here with it. Pushing sweaty hair out of his eyes, Snape clears the last of the trail on legs gone watery, moving towards the light in trepidation and curdling desire. 

The tunnel ends in a slight rise, moonlight spilling down to him through the frame of a broken trap door. He quickly calculates his direction, the time it's likely taken to get here. The Shrieking Shack. Of course. As he takes the final steps, the haunting scent now sending waves of prickling heat over his skin, he hears a low sound: strangled sobs, guttural and hurting. The soft noises twist and pull strangely at his gut, pairing with the smell on the air in a way that sends a panicky thrill straight through his core. Something's happening inside that house, something dark and base that speaks to him in a language too old for words. It twines itself with the roots of his mounting rut, telling him that it's his alone to see. 

Inside the house, Snape tries his best to move soundlessly, skirting his way around the dusty furniture grown hulking and ominous in the dimness. Tries to become one with the shadows, testing each step for sudden tattletale creaks as he makes his way up the staircase--summoned bodily by the mingled scent and sound now in a way that barely has anything to do with him at all. Towards the end of an upstairs hall, the broken sobs suddenly cut short, a muffled wail rising high and reedy in their place. Hearing it, Snape has to steel himself against bolting into a full run, near-desperate now to reach the source of the siren’s call, veela-sweet and enticing. Instead, he slides along the wall the rest of the way, curving himself shoulder first into the moonlit room, just praying that he's ready. 

There: hunched over in the gloom of a far corner, a huddled shape curled in upon itself amidst the antique bric-a-brac, trembling tightly. Another wavering cry pours its liquid heat down the base of his spine, and then--head snapped up, frightened doe-eyes lock with his own horror-stricken stare. No. This isn't right.  
Slowly, carefully, the petals of a flower unfurling in measured increments, Lupin--Remus _bloody_ Lupin--uncoils from around himself on the dusty floor, limbs loose and slender. He takes a shuddering breath, dropping his arms from around his knees and further opening in a way that Snape decidedly _does not_ feel himself softening to. “Severus?” he asks, voice small and plaintive in the deadly silence of the room. 

Not Snivellus. Not even Snape. _Severus_. Something, no-- _everything_ \--is wrong here. And he knows, hating it with all his life, he _knows_ that Lupin’s wrong is the same breed as his own. Unable to turn and leave, frozen at the threshold as though physically bound by the cloying scent, the aching vulnerability of Lupin's trembling shoulders, he does the only thing he knows how. He sneers.  
“Isn't tomorrow supposed to be your big night out?” he spits, arms folding over the pounding in his chest. “That's what you use this place for, isn't it. I know what you are.” 

Lupin, feverish and panicked, is shaking his head at him now, worry-frown creasing his sweating brow. “This… this isn't _that_. It's, it's… too soon, I don't know.” His eyes scan the room frantically, almost seeming to search for the answer amongst the broken furniture, hoping to find it hidden in a curl of faded wallpaper. Bereft, he lifts his gaze back to Snape again, dazed and terrified. Pleading. To Snape's absolute dismay, Lupin's face crumples in sudden tears, voice hitching. “I don't know what's happening to me!” 

A fresh wave of scent washes over Snape in time with the sudden surge of emotion from its source, urging him to hold, to soothe and comfort. To protect. He clamps down on it hard, a spike of rage twisting up to choke out the foreign tenderness. He won't be controlled. He won't be humiliated like this. He glances around himself, freshly suspicious, certain now that this has all been planned. “You're an omega, you twat. You're going into heat, stinking up the grounds most likely for miles.” He narrows his eyes, fists clenched tightly at his sides as he finally takes his first step fully into the room. “Black put you up to this, didn't he?” 

The sound of the name seems to propel Lupin into a state of full-blown terror, bolting upright on wobbling legs and shaking his head even harder in petrified denial. Snape wants to look away in disgust, wants more than anything to feel the pleasure of dismissing the other boy's obvious plight. Instead, his eyes are drawn to the dark, wet patch at the apex of his trousers, saliva filling his mouth in a hot and sympathetic rush. “No,” Lupin is insisting desperately. “No, I can't… _this_ can't. Please don't tell them!”  
Snape's eyes snap up to Lupin's stricken face, and honestly, this is just too much now. Something tense and brittle gives way in him and suddenly he's striding across the room, every inch of him quaking with unspent fury. Before he even registers his own forward motion, his hands are twisted up tight in Lupin's woolen jumper, snarling in his face, pushing him hard up against the half-rotten panels of the wall. “Don't you dare!” He ignores the way his voice cracks, the note of hurt he never authorized. “Don't even try to tell me they don't have EVERYTHING to do with this!” 

A sick, giddy thrill courses through him to have Lupin pinned this way, a heady power he could easily grow drunk off of. He pushes in even closer, telling himself it's anger, this righteous feeling that's got him panting hard, cock stiffening where it's trapped against his thigh. Lupin’s gone nearly limp in his hold, the boy's slightly smaller frame soft and pliant beneath his hands. Somehow, remarkably, he isn't cringing away, barely even seems scared anymore where only seconds ago he looked ready to faint. He holds Snape's blistering gaze (how has he never noticed Lupin's eyes? Hazel and inviting...) throat bobbing as he gulps once, the sound loud despite Snape's rapid, huffing breaths. “They’re not here,” he says softly, voice held just above a whisper. “They don't even know _I'm_ here. It's just us.”  
Something's shifted, turned in the air between them quicker than a snitch and he feels Lupin's scent reaching into him, pulling at some loose thread in his resolve, tension bleeding out, unravelling. Snape tries valiantly to hold it steady, to keep familiar points of reference right where they belong. “Even if that's true, you'll use this somehow,” he growls. “You can't help yourself. You hate me.”  
A look of something close to hurt passes over Lupin's face before his features quickly soften, eyes half-lidded and travelling slowly over Snape's looming scowl. He drops his gaze to the lips still tightly pressed in anger, pink tongue darting out lightning-quick to run across his own before worrying them briefly between spit-slick teeth. Snape holds himself frozen, eyes widening in stunned silence as Lupin lifts a trembling palm between them to simply drag it, sweaty and burning, over his face. He stands immobile, feeling the heat of Lupin's fingers trailing forehead to chin, tracing almost reverently over the aquiline curve of his nose. A shudder, deep and delicious, runs through him before he even feels it coming. “Oh, Severus…” Lupin is shaking his head slowly, almost sadly. “I don't _hate_ you. Right… right now, you're the best thing I've ever seen.”

Snape stands at a precipice, more surely than he did beneath the whomping willow, moreso even than he had two minutes ago at the door to this very room. He wants it to be a trick--wants familiar cruelty to swoop in and take the warm gleam out of Lupin's eyes--but he knows the scent seeping into his every pore, drawing blood down from his head into his growing hard-on can't lie. And it's so good, whispering sweet nothings to the deepest, most secret parts of him. Telling him a truth he's longed to hear. He's _wanted_. “Shut up,” he says, even as he feels himself ducking down to sniff along Lupin's exposed throat, lips grazing. “Shut your filthy mouth.”  
His hands are still fisted in Lupin's clothes, holding him still and he hears the boy whimper almost painfully against his shoulder at the soft scrape of teeth below his ear. Snape licks once along the salty skin before pressing down again, pale throat held gently between his jaws. Lupin's moan comes low and nearly anguished, bubbling up from someplace deep to vibrate through the cavern of Snape's hot and hungry mouth. He groans back, hands relaxing, not even recognizing the sound of his own voice. Without his even telling them to, his hands are roving over every part of the omega he can reach, groping and pulling, squeezing in appraisal. Somehow uncertain the other boy is staying put, he leans back just enough to look him in the eyes again, saying almost shyly: “I'm gonna knot you, okay?” 

Lupin lists forward into the sheltering curve of his body, lithe arms wrapping up to cling around his neck in a trembling embrace. He's pressing his face hot into the crook of Snape's neck, hands tangled in his hair, begging “please, please” as though the promise hadn't already just been given. “Let me be nice to you,” he's saying, breathless and eager, his mouth clumsily seeking Snape's, pressing furtive kisses along the way. “Let me just be good to you.” Snape's hands have found their way down the back of Lupin's corduroys, long fingers dipping in to slide through the wet slick coating all the way down the backs of his thighs. Feeling the slippery glide against his skin, a sharp stab of desire nearly buckles him over, sudden and painful as a serpent's strike. He breaks their kiss, ceasing his mouth’s rabid claim just to suck his own slick-sodden fingers, moaning loud and frowning almost troubled at how good the boy tastes. Idea catching, Lupin slides back down onto his knees before him, shaking hands a fumbling blur of tremors at his belt. Snape merely watches in strangled fascination, hands hovering uncertainly over his tousled hair.  
“Oh,” Lupin breathes out simply, saucer-eyed at the sight of his erection springing free of his pants, dipping down heavy with its own weight in the chill night air. A single bead of moisture slides out to catch the moonlight, hovering like a tear about to drop and his gaze lingers appreciative before he follows the look with a hot swipe of his tongue. “You're beautiful,” he's saying, the wistful words ghosting over Snape's skin just as his mouth closes warm and wet and perfect over the flushed head.  
Snape can barely stand all that he's feeling. It's too good, it's torture, it's everything that matters in the whole world as his hands cradle Lupin's head like the most fragile gift. He's pouring praise and promises alike, thrusting deep into that hot, giving mouth--fully embraced by the very lips he's seen countless times twitched up in an uncomfortable smirk, witness to his humiliation. And oh, he wants to _forgive_. Wants that patient loyalty for his very own, wants to fuck sweet absolution into every willing hole.  
As though he knows, as if Snape's thoughts are plain in the cadence of his moans, Lupin pulls back gasping and beaming up at him in wonder. “I don't think anyone in this whole school could've helped me like you,” he's saying, voice shaky and rough. “Not with this.”  
“C’mere.” Snape reaches down for him, pulling him up to nuzzle against his face, hands tugging at his shirt, his tie, sliding possessive and hungry against each sliver of newly exposed skin. “I want you naked,” he tells him plainly, his voice grown husky with long-contained need. “I promise I won't tell.” 

His robes spread out over the floor (the closest Snape can manage to something chivalrous in the cramped drabness of the creaking house), he peels off Lupin's layers, licking and nipping as he goes, thrilling at every plea and bitten-off yelp he manages to elicit. It's nearly as good as magic--instincts previously locked away now welling up to meet the call of an omega's seductive power--knowing exactly where to touch, how to coax and caress the body writhing beneath him into wet and wanton readiness. Lupin hovers at the edge of something close to madness, Snape can taste it in his scent, arching and twisting in his need to be filled. He's sobbing and sighing in turns, surging near-possessed under Snape's touch, chanting nonsense: “Please... oh, Severus… oh, fuck me… ohgodohpleaseohplease…”

 _If Black could see him now_ , Snape thinks, a surge of something fierce and possessive rising up in him as he leans down to take Lupin's face between his hands and lick the soft, gasping cries right out of his mouth. This is for him, just for him, this prize his alone to claim--the Half-Blood Prince, the black knight come to rescue the omega trapped and yearning in the tower. A deep rumble tears its way out of his throat--a sound he didn't even know he could make--and he smells before he feels the sudden gush of fresh slick flooding out to saturate the crumpled cloak beneath them. “Oh fuck, oh _Christ_ , yes!” Lupin is shouting, rutting up against the press of Snape's still-clothed body in an absolute frenzy, cumming hard between them over nothing more than a kiss and a growl. Snape needs to be inside him or he swears he'll die. 

With Lupin gathered up in his arms, he eases him onto all fours, held for a moment breathless and enamoured at the sight of the other boy dropping his upper half down towards the floor on instinct, back arched and beautifully presenting. “ _Ahhhh_ , Remus… _oh_ ,” he breathes, running his hands along the smooth stretch of that slender spine to take his hips in a steady grasp. He's riveted, caught spellbound by the open invitation, the honey-glistening feast of pure omega sex laid out before him. Lupin's pink and tender hole is the fount of all magic, all desire, and Snape bows his head to worship, lapping hungrily and probing deep, shivering at the chorus of pleasured whines that fill the room. Lupin is making sounds no human should know: soft, catlike chirps and trills, lilting banshee calls, a strange omegan dialect the memory of which Snape knows will be the lullaby of his every sleepless night to come. He groans and hums right back, tasting Lupin's readiness in sweet, hot little pulses, singing the slick straight out onto his tongue. It's time, it's time. 

He doesn't know how he got here, pants and trousers down around his knees, lined up hard and ready to plunge, but Snape knows for certain there's no other place he wants to be, not ever. The sound he makes as he slides his way inside nearly frightens him in its intensity, a lifetime's worth of lonely waiting finally released, the groan of a tormented ghost. 

The pleasure’s nearly blinding. 

At first he goes slowly, just savouring it, almost not trusting that it won't be taken suddenly away from him, that he truly gets to have this. His panting is so loud in the room and beneath it, he hears Lupin’s whispering voice and thinks to himself: _this is it, finally, the trick--he's cursing me_. He holds his breath for a moment, and just as quickly feels himself melting boneless, biting back a whimper as the soft words drift up to him: “I know you, I know you…” Lupin's saying, voice wrecked and wrung-out, “this is who we are… oh, you know me now…”

Snape moans long and broken, curving overtop the arch of Lupin's back, pulling up on tilted hips to impale himself deep. He thinks of missed chances, opposing houses, all the million tiny moments things could have been different--just another seat on the train, a stray thought beneath the sorting hat, anything--and he's driving it in, torn between ecstasy and regret, fucking as though he could turn back time with every thrust. _He could've been mine_ , he thinks. There's a growl shuddering out of him between clenched teeth, the wordless story of everything he can't say. He's certain Lupin understands--that he knows it too--hearing the strangled cries choked out in time with each fluttering grip against his cock, clenching tight around him sweet enough to make him weep. “Oh, you've got me,” he breathes out along the sweat-damp spine beneath his lips, sending tremors down to where they're joined, slick and dripping. His hips are rolling, their bodies one sinuous movement, just slow, deep strokes that have the other boy gasping his way into orgasm, cloak bunched up in fists and calling Snape’s name for no one but them alone to hear. He's no fool--Snape knows he can't keep this--but he vows right then to see the omega through the night, ride him through his heat as many times as it takes, make love to him hard and trembling until the fever breaks. It's that image alone that pulls him over the brink.  
“ _Ohhh_ Remus, oh….” His knot is forming, he's pouring himself out in exquisite spasms, buried deep and pulsing. Never in his life has he been this close, been so welcomed and embraced. Lupin doesn't just _want_ him-- wants _more_ of him, offering himself up as loving vessel to his seed. Snape's teeth are at his neck, pressing firm and holding still and he wants-- oh, _god_ how he wants to make this boy his home. “Yessss,” he hears Lupin urging, something wild and near-crazed in the rasp of his words, a shadow of the wolf come early. “Do it...do it... _yesyesyesyesyes_ ….”

It takes a moment for Snape to remember speech, for the light of rational thought to rise from the depths of alpha need. A primal instinct within him rears its head, outraged as he slowly opens his jaws, easing back almost painfully. He feels something crucial give way, some tension he didn't know he was holding onto, and shocked, he discovers that he's begun to cry. “I can't,” he whispers, pressing his face against a shoulder blade gone suddenly stiff. “You don't know what you're saying.”

There's an image in his mind, of Lupin as he's seen him countless times over the years--as he saw him only just today--smiling indulgently in the company of his friends, Black's hand clapped over his shoulder in easy camaraderie. Black, the same “friend” who sent him here to find a werewolf, so ready to let Lupin take the fall in his eagerness to satisfy a petty grudge. Snape knows what it is to live on the wrong side of Sirius Black’s hate, knows even better what his own Slytherin housemates are capable of. To claim Lupin, to deliver the bite his whole body yearns to give, would be to render him tribeless, cast out. Tied only to Snape, a fate he himself wouldn't want if he had the choice. Potter and Black, even Pettigrew: Lupin's chosen family. The absolute worst, but they're all the boy has. He can't take that away from him, not now. 

They're curled together on the floor, Lupin’s pale body slotted up against him frail and perfect in his arms. “But...don't we lo-,” he sniffs, and Snape knows he's crying, too. “Don't we like each other now?” The omega's voice is small and trembling, not the voice of a lover, deep and throaty with lust, but the voice of a bewildered sixteen year old boy. Lupin's voice. Just Lupin, sweet and shy and heartbreakingly troubled. “We do,” Snape tells him, pressing a wet kiss at the nape of his neck and tasting only the salt of his own tears. “We do.” He doesn't have the words to say, doesn't know how to frame things in a softer light. Any other alpha in the world would be a fool not to claim him at the hint of a chance. But he's not any other alpha. He's Snape. It's not rejection, not truly. It's just the way things are. He buries his nose into Lupin's hair, breathes him in, tries to pull him somehow closer. Even locked together this way, knot still softly pumping out, he feels the distance opening up between them: an impossible chasm. He doesn't have the words because there aren't any. He tries anyway, knowing that neither of them is any stranger to life's casual unfairness. “You _were_ good to me,” he whispers into the nest of damp curls, “you were so good.” He nods once, reaching up to swipe roughly at what he's decided are the last of his tears. Tomorrow he'll carry on as though none of this ever happened; Lupin deserves that much from him, at least. “I'm gonna be good to you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd like to visit:  
> [roy-batty-boy.tumblr.com](https://roy-batty-boy.tumblr.com/)


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